


Home

by wayfaring_fledermaus



Series: Sam and Jess week - 2015 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Depression, F/M, Hope vs. Despair, Hopeful Ending, Post-Stanford, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Series, Sam-Centric, Stanford Era, Symbolism, and, unspecified season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfaring_fledermaus/pseuds/wayfaring_fledermaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At night he feels naked in the surrounding shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

She didn't always understand him. In fact, most often she didn't. Perhaps that is what drew her toward him first. The giant with starburst eyes, changing congruently by the flicker of computer backlight. He slouched like an uncertain sequoia, but his laughter held youth like sentient amber. She didn't understand how a smile could hold hope and belief while marking eyes with sorrow. Not knowing what else to do, she would try to make him laugh and whisper the truth, “I am proud of you.” She didn't mind his compulsions, pretending to ignore the way he tried to check the locks on windows and doors without drawing her attention, or how his face became a mask upon entering a new room, eyes scanning almost clinically. It scared her though, when she would wake to find the sheets saturated by his sweat, his long body writhing and teeth grinding like a guard to caged whimpers. It scared her, but she would crawl across him and settle her body over his. She would tell him, "I’ll protect you," and would listen, rubbing his arms and pressing her ear to his chest as his heartbeat steadied and his breath no longer hissed from flared nostrils, “you’re safe here.”

                  ...

Sometimes he felt like all he ever did was run. The monsters in the darkness were normal, so he fled from nightmares, from himself, from everything he thought he could have been. He ran inward until he felt red with blood, emptiness personified. Emptiness and tree rot pretending to stand sturdy in a forest of flame. He didn’t need to remove the darkness to know that his walls were bland, his marginal existence hidden beneath a mattress. The nights had a way of whittling, shedding strips as his space retreated, at himself, smaller and smaller. The whittlers fancying him their darling immaculate, the boy in the past would no longer have a face. Without space he wouldn’t dare to move, or even desire breath as every twitch threatened to shatter the aged balsa and bring the earth to fall down upon him.

And then, as it often was, the wondering would begin. The sun far was a distant star whittled by the night, and it burned like a seed in a dark sea. Then sometimes with thrashing, at other times without intent, he would find himself breathing. And from within, like a burgeoning birdsong sighing from a hollow he would hear it, “I am proud of you.” In the ocean endless black, a root, like a finger, touches home.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt taken from Tumblr post. #samjessweek
> 
> You can find me at http://bohemianboswell.tumblr.com/
> 
> As someone who often forgets how to breathe at night, I dedicate this to all who need it. Yes, I'm talking to you, Sunflower.


End file.
